CLEARWATER, Fla. — With his presidential bid as cold as the whipping winds he left behind in Vermont--one of the many states where he ran poorly in Tuesday's cavalcade of primaries--Lamar Alexander had headed south intending to draw a line in the Florida sand.

Instead, the Sunshine State became the burial ground for his Republican presidential campaign.

Alexander, 55, had not expected to do well in Tuesday's contests, but he had not anticipated doing as poorly as he did. After a day of campaigning in Florida, which holds its primary next Tuesday, Alexander learned that he ran fourth in most of Tuesday's races, and in one case fifth. Nor did he win a single delegate.

The first sign of the impending decision came as the Alexander campaign plane touched down in St. Petersburg, Fla., after a campaign stop in West Palm Beach. The candidate, normally accessible to reporters, ducked quickly out of the plane, avoiding the press pack that for days had badgered him about whether and when he would quit the race.

At first, as rumors began to swirl of an impending withdrawal, aides tried to avoid answering the increasingly impatient questions. But finally, as the hour grew later and the returns grimmer, Mike Murphy, the campaign's chief strategist, stood by the bar of the Belleview Mido Resort Hotel here and conceded the inevitable.

"The final decision was just made," he said, an exhausted look on his face. "There was a phone call with some of his family and some of his closest advisors."

"Gov. Alexander will be holding a press conference and making a statement," Murphy said, adding that Alexander would return to Tennessee, where, aides said, he would formally announce his withdrawal at 10 a.m. PST. Although Murphy said Alexander was in good spirits, the candidate seemed withdrawn in the final hours before he decided to pull out.

In identifying Florida earlier this week as the state where he would stake his final hope of galvanizing his campaign, Alexander had said that if he failed to derail Bob Dole here, he would "gracefully" bow out and endorse the Senate majority leader. Alexander campaign sources late Tuesday night said he still plans to endorse Dole, but it is unclear whether he will choose his Nashville news conference to do so.

Earlier in the day, as he stumped in Florida, Alexander had sought to quiet the drumbeat of defeat that increasingly surrounded his campaign.